Infinite Requiem
by LadyKayoss
Summary: (AU)When something goes terribly wrong, Aki awakens into a grim new reality where the world may be beyond salvation.
1. Wake Up Screaming

Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, or anything associated with said property.

Author's Note: This story is based on a dream that I had once. It was a very cool dream, and when I woke up I immediately began to try shape it into a story. This has been sitting on my computer for quite awhile, and it's an idea I like too much to just abandon. So I'll try to get the entire thing written – maybe even do updates every other week, time permitting. It's my hope that I'll be able to stick to writing a new fic, since restarting fics that have been sitting for a year – or more – is difficult, though I'm trying.

_**Infinite Requiem**_

_One _– _Wake Up Screaming_

_The dream is different, somehow. The barren, scarred landscape has been leeched of all color except the sickly green of the sky. Aki takes a tentative step forward, her faze on the same-yet-different landscape spread out before her. What, she wonders, has changed it?_

"_Aki? Where are we?" The voice startles her, and she wonders what whim of her subconscious has brought Gray into her dream._

"_On an alien planet." Her voice is flat; this new aspect of her dream worries her._

"_How is that possible?" The gruff voice makes her pause. He sounds very real…_

"_I'm not entirely sure," she admits._

"_You seem pretty calm." Gray's voice reflects his confusion._

"_I've been having this dream every night for months." It's only a half-truth; why is everything changed?_

"_Dream?"_

"_Well, whatever it is…" Aki finally realizes the truth. "You're really here, aren't you? What's happening to me?" She tries to keep her voice calm, but for him to be here, things must have taken a turn for the worst. _

"_Dr. Sid is implanting the seventh spirit directly into your body." He sounds skeptical, and Aki has to smile._

"_Then you're my spiritual support? Gray, how sweet of you!"_

_The soft glow from the moon highlights the somber expression on his face. "Look, I don't think you realize how serious the situation is."_

_As if his words are a cue, darkness sweeps over the horizon. She places a hand on his shoulder to keep him from overreacting. "Just watch," she begins, then the rest of the words freeze in her throat. What approaches is not the Phantom army._

_Her grip on Gray tightens. "What's happening?" The landscape is disintegrating before her eyes – not the destruction of the planet, for the sky itself is being engulfed by blackness as well. The dream is falling apart around her, as if her consciousness is fighting to waken… or as if she is dying._

"_Aki!" Gray's voice sounds distant, and her fingers pass through his shoulder as if she is a Phantom._

"We're losing her!" _Dr. Sid's distant voice echoes through the shrinking dreamscape. _"Aki, hold on! Aki!"

_The world around her goes black, and then, there is only nothingness…_

XXX

_It is a nothingness that spans eternity. She lives; somehow, she knows this, but it is an unlife, one of no light, no sensation, no thought, only vague awareness. She cannot feel anger, nor regret, nor sorrow… she feels nothing._

_Nothing… and then the monotony is broken. At first, she doesn't notice. Then, as if waking from a deep sleep, she becomes aware of voices around her, reduced to barely audible murmurs as if over a great distance. The voices grow louder, closer. She wants to scream at them to stop, to let her sleep, but she hasn't yet found her voice._

_Then the first sensation, the first _real _sensation she'd felt in what seems like ages, washes over her. Pain. Pain like nothing she'd ever felt before. The nothingness around her shatters completely, and agony rushes through her, like a tidal wave. Now she finally finds her voice in a scream that rips itself from her throat, a scream so loud it causes her to do what she's been unable to do for an endless time…_

_She wakes up…_

XXX

The scream still echoed in her ears as Aki's eyes slowly opened. She blinked once, the movement feeling awkward and unfamiliar. She lay still as her sluggish mind slowly came to terms with the fact that she was awake. Awake… had she been sleeping? She could remember…

She blinked again, wondering if her vision was messed up or if the room really was as dim as it looked. She squinted, trying to make out the details. _Where am I? _She dredged the depths of her memory, struggling to recall what had happened. It was slow to come; she decided to ease her memory along by recalling simple things. _My name is Aki Ross. I was born October 7, 2038, in San Francisco. _Yes, all this she was certain of. _I am… a doctor, I think. Yes, a doctor. _She could remember her training, her attendance of the Houston Military Academy so she could join the USMF scientific division. She remembered Dr. Sid. And Gray.

_The seventh spirit! _Her eyes widened as she remembered retrieving the spirit, the Phantom attack, getting shot…

She must be in the hospital, then. Gray had said they were implanting the spirit directly into her chestplate. That must be why she felt so weak. _I don't recognize this place, though. It doesn't look anything like the facilities in the Bioetheric Center._ Her eyes had adjusted enough to make out the ceiling, pale with dark squares where ceiling panels were missing. She turned her head slightly, and was pleased her body responded. She could feel nothing below her neck, and had worried she'd lost all control of her body. Her pleasure in the small movement quickly faded, however; though she couldn't make out details in the dark shapes across the room, something about what she could see suggested it wasn't in prime condition.

And now that she was thinking about it, something about the air tasted stale, musty. _Definitely not a hospital. _Aki sat up, an awkward motion that would have startled her had she not been distracted by her unkempt surroundings. _This isn't right… not right at all… _"Sid?" she croaked. Her voice sounded rusty with disuse. "Gray? Hello?"

Her voice echoed. It was the only sound she could discern. Which meant she was alone in what looked to be an abandoned section of some strange building. _Those men on the ship, the 307's… they tried to kill me. Sid could be protecting me from General Hein by hiding me here. There could be a note from him on that table over there explaining everything. _It made sense, and the sooner she got up and checked, the sooner she would know.

Could she get up? She didn't feel hurt. In fact, she didn't feel anything at all, really. But the lingering memory of an all-consuming agony made her pause. Perhaps she was hurt, badly, and could feel nothing because of pain killers. There was no pain now, and her body seemed responsive enough, so she decided to give movement a try. Tentatively, she shifted her legs, dangling them over the edge of the gurney until they touched the floor. With a light push, she was standing; a little awkwardly, perhaps, but it was a good sign.

The sound of her footsteps was muffled by a thick layer of dust that covered the tile, and her frown deepened. Where was she? There were many places within the barrier that were abandoned due to the ever-shrinking population, but she'd never seen a place in such a sad state of disrepair as this place. It looked as if it had been abandoned for decades…

In the dim light, she could make out a similar carpet of dust over the table, undisturbed for years. _No note… _Aki glanced wildly around, but saw nothing that resembled a message from her comrades. She could make out pale smears on the floor where tile showed through the dust – signs that _someone _had dragged the gurney in here and left her.

Fear rose within her. This was _not _something Dr. Sid would do, not even to save her life. Had something happened?

A horrifying thought occurred to her. What if Dr. Sid hadn't been able to stop the Phantom infection, and it had spread out of control within her? What if she'd been dumped outside the barrier and left to die?

For that was the only place she could be, the only place where the air could be so still, musty with age. The only place where the barrier's ever-present glow failed to shine through the slats window she could dimly discern. A sob escaped from her; this was a cruel way to dispose of a victim of a Phantom infection. _Does this mean General Hein won? _Would he really leave her die such a lonely, inhumane death?

It couldn't be true. _No one _could be that cruel!

There had to be something else. Something she was missing. Her mind refused to believe what the clues were telling her. She stumbled towards the window, needing to see the truth for herself. Because no one, she kept telling herself, would strand a Phantom victim outside the barrier, no matter how dangerous her condition. There _had _to be a logical explanation, something her still-scattered wits were missing.

She found the cord to the blinds and tried to raise them. However, her tug had been too much for the old window covering to handle, and it broke from its setting and fell the floor with a clatter. Aki didn't notice the damage; she hadn't even heard the noise, for she was focused entirely on the sight before her.

The moon, nearly full, hanging over a ruined city. There was no barrier to obstruct the view before her.

No tears stung her eyes, despite the truth of the situation. All she felt was a hollowness inside of her. She'd accepted, long ago, that she could die from her Phantom infection. She'd shed all her tears for her fate then. This… as much as this situation hurt, she knew she had to face the facts. She was alone outside the barrier. She'd lost her fight with the infection. She was going to die. The only despair that she felt was for the fact that her friends had _abandoned _her, just when she needed them most. Even if Dr. Sid and Gray couldn't do anything to help her, their presence would have eased her passing.

Aki lowered her eyes, not wanting to see the sight before her any longer. _It's only a matter of time before the Phantoms find me. Maybe I should just curl up on the gurney and stay there, until… _She didn't finish the thought, because something had arrested her attention.

She'd rested her hands on the window sill, and in the moon's soft light, she could see them clearly. Slowly, Aki lifted her right hand until it was in front of her face, wondering if she could possibly be seeing what she thought she saw. Instead of the smooth, washed-out white tone that skin took under moonlight, her hands _reflected _the light with a dull gleam, like… like…

Like metal. Her hands were encased in metal. And it didn't stop at her hands; her arms, where they disappeared into her shirtsleeves, were covered, too. And her legs… they were the same way. A quick examination proved her torso was in the same condition.

"What happened to me!" she screamed.

XXX

She went a little mad then. Later, she'd wonder at the insensate fury that had driver her to claw at the metal with her unfeeling fingers, while screaming at the top of her lungs. She fell into a crouch as her legs gave out under her, but she was unaware of the motion. Her thin shirt tore under her assault as she sought somewhere to grab the metal and rip it away. She wanted it off, off, off! She finally found purchase where her flesh met metal under her jaw, and even the flashes of pain, the first real feeling she'd had since her awakening, wasn't enough to restore her sanity.

When scarlet motes began to dance before Aki's vision, she squeezed her eyes shut. _What… what is wrong with me? _ The madness began to ebb, and Aki gasped for breath. _That was totally unlike me! _Clearly, there was more wrong with her than she'd initially thought. She needed to get out of there, to get help _now. _

She slowly opened her eyes. _I'll have to search this room, see if I can find any clues as to what's been done to me. And then I'll have to get out of here. Maybe if I follow the tracks of the people who left me here… Oh, God… _The red haze that had preceded her return to sanity was still there, but now she recognized it for what it was: the segmented coils of a Snake Phantom, wrapped around her body. She couldn't feel the tingling sensation that would indicate contact with it, but she could see that pieces of it were _inside her. _

Panic froze her limbs as the creature's head swung above her, and Aki jerked her head upwards at the movement. Its feelers probed at her body, and Aki could only helplessly stare up at the face of death. She wanted to close her eyes so she wouldn't see the moment when her spirit was wrenched from her body, but her eyelids wouldn't obey…

The Phantom screamed, a deafening sound at such close range. Her ears were still ringing as it loosed its coils from her body and flowed down through the floor, leaving Aki crouched motionless, her eyes on the undisturbed dust where the Phantom had slipped through the tile.

_It didn't take my spirit… _She drew in a deep breath. _Why? _Other questions were occurring to her as well. Why had she been able to see the Phantom? Why hadn't any Phantoms gotten to her earlier? This one hadn't found her until, she presumed, it had heard her screams and followed them to her. Did it have something to do with the metal that coated her body? Did it muffle her spirit, somehow? But, if that were the case, the Phantom still could have taken her spirit, anyway. So why hadn't it?

What the hell was going on?

She stood unsteadily, using the wall behind her for support. Her body seemed to be responding more smoothly now, though she still felt only numbness. Except for where her fingers had dug under her jaw; she'd need to find a mirror to see how much damage she had done. But at least the pain meant she could still feel something. The complete lack of sensation she'd been feeling had begun to alarm her.

She made a quick search of the room. From what she could see, it had been a laboratory of some sort, though it looked as if nothing had been touched for years, up until she'd been dumped there. _So I won't be finding any clues here. _She'd follow the tracks, then, see where they led her. To answers, hopefully, before she dropped dead of a Phantom infection.

The tracks were only visible in the dimness because the tile beneath the thick layer of dust had been white, leaving a path that was surprisingly easy to follow. Aki followed the path out of the room, glancing warily to either side before stepping into the corridor. There was no sound except for the pounding of her heart and her ragged breathing; even the moaning of Phantoms was absent.

The trail took her down a labrynth of shattered corridors, with several unexpected twists and turns where the path was blocked by debris. Aki halted once to examine a pile of rubble that had fallen through the ceiling from the floor above, bringing down much of the wall with it. Pieces of equipment hung down from frayed cords, familiar equipment, like that found in hospitals. Aki frowned as she picked out what looked like the remains of a bio-etheric laser amidst the debris. _That… that's a relatively recent invention. Why is there one in a building that's been abandoned for decades? And why does it look so old? _

The feeling of wrongness intensified. She turned away and resumed following the footprints, knowing it was the only way of getting answers. She quickened her pace, and finally, after about a quarter of an hour, the trail led to a pair of double doors, one sagging on its remaining hinge, the other gone completely. She kept a wary eye on the hanging door, which creaked at her passage but remained in its semi-upright position.

Steeling herself for travel through the city's haunted streets, Aki took her first steps into the ruined city.

XXX

"She's on the move." The words were clipped with irritation as the black-clad woman watched Aki Ross leave the ruined hospital. The scientist's steps were still slow and uncertain; bringing her down would be a snap. "I should be able to retrieve her before she reaches the population center." The woman rose from her crouch, ready to drop from the ledge where she'd been seated.

"Let her go." The woman almost lost her balance in surprise as the words echoed in her ear.

"Can you repeat that?" she asked, not certain she was hearing the voice correctly. She'd been sent here to retrieve Dr. Ross; she wanted to finish her task and return to the base.

"Let her go. Let her see this for herself. It will make explaining easier," the voice explained in a weary tone.

"Are you sure that's wise?"

"It's not like we can lose her. Just follow at a distance, let her see the city and the people, then round her up when you think it wise." The come link in her ear fell silent, and she sighed irritably. She thought it wisest to collect Dr. Ross _now, _but she knew that wouldn't be acceptable. So, gritting her teeth, she activated her wrist computer, bringing up the signal from the homing beacon implanted in Dr. Ross's body, and followed the scientist's weaving path.

It was going to be one of those days…

XXX

She wasn't aware that the surroundings were familiar until she realized she had instinctively chosen a path that she _knew. _The buildings had become decayed, the streets strewn with rubble as the buildings fell to pieces around her, but she recognized the area, and it filled her with dread. _This is… this is _within _the New York barrier limit! But where is the barrier? _A quick glance upward revealed a vast night sky, obstructed only by the skeletons of the abandoned skyscrapers.

_New York has fallen… _Aki's body began to tremble, and she felt a scream well up within her. _Sid… Gray… They're all dead!_

She was close to falling to her knees and wailing in despair, inviting any nearby Phantom to come and feast upon her spirit. _Another city gone, when we were so close to finding the answer! Gone, gone, GONE!_

_But… if everyone is gone, who left me in that hospital room? Why leave me in a dead city? It makes no sense! _Aki fought back her hysteria, forcing herself to think this through logically. Something was going on, and she needed to find out what. She needed to find out why she'd been left out here, why her body was sheathed in metal, and why the now-visible Phantoms seemed to be ignoring her.

Aki resumed walking, heading towards what had once been the city's center. If there was anyone still living here, somehow, it would be near the heart of the city. And as she drew nearer, she began to see signs that there might be life in the city, after all: the buildings were in better shape, and the streets were mostly clear of debris. And then there was the fence up ahead; chain-link and gleaming, it was clearly a new addition. Beyond that fence, she could hear a dull roar – a meld of the varying sounds of humanity. _There are people alive in the city! Without a barrier! _

The fence was easy to climb, so its purpose obviously wasn't to keep out invaders. _It's probably just meant to keep people accidentally from wandering into an abandoned part of the city. _It showed a surprising unconcern for safety that made Aki uncomfortable. _What's going on? When did everyone stop giving a damn that something could sneak in and kill them? How long was I unconscious, anyway? This didn't all happen in a day!_

She landed awkwardly, and would have sprained or broken something had her legs not been encased in metal. She supposed she should be grateful to her mysterious benefactors for something, at least. But she highly doubted this had been done to her just to protect her from a few bumps and bruises.

Following the sounds of life, Aki saw her first people: a couple strolling along the raised walkway ahead of her. Their style of dress was peculiar, but that wasn't what caught her attention: there was the gleam of metal visible under their clothing. Like her, they were sheathed in it. And they seemed completely unaware of the Phantom that lay in wait about ten feet in front of them. Aki opened her mouth to shout a warning, starting to run forward. Her legs were still unaccustomed to the motion, however, and she fell sprawling, forcing her breath from her throat in a gasp. She couldn't cry a warning; just gasp for air as the couple continued walking towards the Phantom… and then stepped _through _it. Only a slight shift sideways to the other side of the walkway showed they knew the Phantom was there. They continued onward, as though nothing had happened.

Like what had happened to her back in the hospital. Aki fingered the metal at her throat, feeling where it joined her skin. What had happened? Why couldn't the Phantoms feed on human spirits anymore? It had something to do with the metal casing… Aki's fingers found the ragged edges of the flesh she'd torn during her fit, and suddenly, it seemed as if the world dropped out from under her. Beneath the skin, instead of feeling damaged flesh, she felt… wires. She held her hand in front of her face, examining the fluid that lightly coated her fingers. It wasn't blood, or pus, or anything else produced by the human body. She brought her fingers to her nose, and smelled oil. Then she wasn't wearing a suit…

"Oh, God…" she whispered. What the hell was going on? Would she be able to find answers in this bizarre parody of the city she'd known? Aki proceeded, knowing her tattered shirt and unkempt hair were drawing looks from these strange metal people, but she didn't care. She needed to find answers, and she needed them now.

A blaring voice, speaking in the familiar tones of a news anchor, caught her attention, and Aki followed it to a holo-screen suspended in a store window. Aki had missed most of the broadcast, but her attention was on the date in the corner. December 27, 2099.

_Twenty… ninety-nine? _She'd somehow lost more than thirty years of her life! She staggered backwards, her head spinning. _No… this isn't right… this can't be true! _It had to be another Phantom-induced dream, because this couldn't possibly be happening!

In her daze, she didn't see the black-clad figure come up behind her until a hand came down on her shoulder. "Gotcha," a voice hissed in her ear.

XXX

"They tell me you had a bad dream." The words were tinny coming through the intercom, wiped clean of any expression. "Was it the same dream?"

The glass that divided the speaker from the quarantine chamber was streaked with dried blood; a legacy of one of the inhabitant's nightmarish fits. The speaker was unaffected by the grisly sight, having seen it many times before. The boy's wounds would heal, and he'd show no sign of the madness that had consumed him until the next fit took him.

"Tell me about the dream." The doctor's voice was commanding, and the boy, curled into a fetal position on his small cot, shifted his head towards the window, the first movement he'd made since the doctor's arrival. Large, dark eyes rimmed by shadows and haunted by pain briefly met the doctor's before once more staring back into space. His lips moved, but no sound came out.

It would take him several minutes to find his voice, so the doctor waited patiently. He studied the boy carefully, noting the blood-encrusted fingers, worn almost to the bone. He'd been digging at the window frame, and clawing at it like an animal desperate for escape. His too-thin frame belied the strength the madness gave him. Of course he was strong; he was the only one of them who had survived. Really, the doctor shouldn't have been thinking of him as a boy; he was physically seventeen years old. It was only his shy, innocent demeanor that made him seem only a child. "Tell me about the dream," the doctor urged again. "Was it the same dream?"

The boy dipped his head in affirmation, but then his brow knotted in confusion. "I… It was… the same but… but different." His voice was soft, hesitant. He hardly spoke unless directly addressed, and even then, coaxing a response from him was a difficult task. "It was blue… everywhere… It felt so good, and made me happy. But then… _They _were there_…_" The doctor made a note on his data pad; though the boy's description so far was identical to those of to previous dreams, copious notes would have to be taken. It always intrigued the doctor that the boy dreamt of Phantoms when he'd never seen any during his entire sheltered life. "The blue… it began to turn red," the boy continued. His eyes widened slightly, as if seeing something too horrible to bear, but was unable to turn away from. "It was everywhere… I couldn't escape from it!" It was at this point in the dream that insanity would overtake him, and he'd launch himself screaming at the plexiglass windows. The doctor waited for the boy to curl himself more tightly into his fetal position and trail off into silence. Instead, a strange expression crossed his face. "Then… then _she _came… She said she wanted to help me, and that she needed my help. Because if I didn't…" his voice was so soft, the doctor held his breath to better hear the boy's words, "everything would turn bad. The whole world… the blue and the red… it turned black and started to break apart around us… I could hear screams… millions and millions of screams… the living _and _the dead…" Now the boy tightened his grip on his knees, pulling them as close as physically possible. His wide eyes closed, and he buried his face in his knees. He wouldn't say anything more until he recovered from the ill effects of his dream.

The doctor stood up, his hands shaking slightly as he reread the boy's final words. While the dream had evolved slightly over the years, this new development disturbed him. It wasn't just the addition of the woman, which would have been an alarming development on its own, but the image of the world going to black… and the screams…

Could he have just foreseen the end of the world?

To Be Continued…


	2. The Soul Past Saving

Disclaimer: All FF:TSW characters are still property of Square, even if Square has no desire to do anything with them ever again. No profit is being made from their use.

Author's Note: See? I'm trying to get this up faster than I have been doing for other fics. If I can keep up a decent updating schedule, it might help prod me into finishing some of the other unfinished works here, such as "Life's River Shall Rise," which I'm having a hard time getting back into – it's just been far too long since I last did anything with it. But I'm trying. And if I can't, I'll try to work on all new fics to keep you all happy. I didn't abandon the TSW fandom; I'm just in a bit of a slump.

_**Infinite Requiem**_

_Two _– _The Soul Past Saving_

Aki gathered herself, tensing for flight, but the grip upon her shoulder was like a vise. Brought up short by that powerful grip, Aki stumbled, tried to get her barely-responsive legs under her, failed and fell against her captor with a cry. The other caught her, steadying Aki before turning her so their eyes could meet. The indignant cry that had been rising in Aki's throat at her treatment was choked off as she realized she _knew _this woman. Her bizarre nightmarish reality had just taken a new twist – she'd last seen this woman thirty years ago, if the news cast could be believed, but she hadn't aged a day!

"Corporal Proudfoot?" Aki asked tentatively. _Unlikely,_ she admonished herself, _not after thirty years_. More likely that this was her daughter or some other relative that bore an uncanny likeness.

"Doctor Ross." Her voice was husky, sarcastic, and all-too-familiar. "So you do remember me." Aki stared at the woman, wondering how she could be here. Then again, wasn't Aki herself here, thirty years out of her own time? Wasn't it possible the same thing had happened to the corporal?

Did that mean that Gray could be here somewhere, too?

She studied the other woman, noticing that Jane, too, had a body of metal ending just beneath her jawline, hidden beneath a form-fitting black outfit and an ankle-length coat. "What's going on? What happened to me? What happened to the city?" The words poured from Aki in a jumble. "Where's Gray? Is he here? What about Sid?"

Jane rolled her eyes in exasperation. "I'm not the best person for explanations; I'm just here to fetch you. Come with me, and everything will be explained." Jane began to stride away, clearly expecting Aki to follow her. Aki just stood, staring after her, mind still too numb to fully comprehend what the corporal had commanded. Realizing that the doctor wasn't following, Jane pivoted on one foot and glowered. "What are you waiting for? You do want to know what the hell is going on, right? You're not going to get the answers just standing around and gawking."

Aki didn't see how she had much choice; either follow Jane, a woman she barely knew but felt some trust towards, or stand around and 'gawk,' ending up who knew where. A stranger in a strange land was more likely to unknowingly break the rules and end up in prison. So Aki set off after the soldier, hoping that their destination would yield more answers than questions. Jane led her back the way she'd come, and Aki wondered if they were going to walk all the way back to where she'd awoken. But before they reached the perimeter fence, Jane paused. She flicked her left wrist, bringing up a small screen that hovered above the vicinity of her wrist. It bleeped softly as she brushed the screen with her fingers.

For several long moments there was silence. Aki tried to fill it with questions, but Jane merely shot her a smoldering glare, and Aki fell silent. The silence between them stretched interminably, until Aki finally decided to break it by asking what they were waiting for. But before she could form the question, a low humming noise that had gradually been increasing in intensity grew too loud for her to be heard. Aki looked skywards and saw a small craft, similar in build to a Copperhead but much smaller, hovering above them. Jane pushed her back with one arm, with the other she manipulated the wrist computer presumably linked to the ship's guidance system and brought it in for a landing.

Jane pulled open the cockpit's hatch and motioned for Aki to get inside. She didn't argue, just awkwardly attempted the climb. Unfortunately, her leg didn't want to lift that high, and Aki fell against the hatch's edge. Jane grabbed her arm and assisted her climb; Aki hid her face in embarrassment at her clumsiness, but Jane's face was surprisingly understanding. "It's always a little awkward, at first," she said. "Once your brain adjusts to your new neural pathways, you won't even notice."

It was on the tip of Aki's tongue to ask _why _she had to adjust… but Jane had promised answers were coming. And Jane had gone back to her previous taciturn attitude, so Aki remained quiet. She could wait a little longer for the answers she sought. She just hoped they'd be good ones…

At least she had plenty to study while she waited; the city below, and even the ship itself, were all marvels. The controls of the ship were simpler than those of any craft Aki had flown; it almost seemed as if Jane were directing it by thought alone. Had technology advanced enough for such a thing to be possible? Perhaps; thirty years ago, the cybernetic body Aki wore would have existed only in science fiction novels.

As for the city, it was composed of towering spires – their height no longer limited by the barrier – with open terraces and walkways, their gleaming surfaces shining brilliantly in the moonlight. When the sun was up, it must be blinding, Aki thought. Most fascinating, however, were the crowded thoroughfares as people enjoyed the nightlife – crowds that included Phantoms that bobbed in and out of sight. No one ran, no one fought… they'd become just another part of the cityscape, albeit a part that moved on its own. They may have been sculptures, for all the notice they garnered. She pressed her nose to the side view port as she took in the view, not caring how ridiculous she must have looked with her face smashed to the glass.

"There's our destination," Jane said suddenly, and Aki's head jerked forward. She was about to ask where, but then she saw it: Directly ahead was a dome of pulsing light, beneath which was a skeletal framework of metal and conduits. It was immediately recognizable: a barrier. _Of course, _Aki realized. _The people may be protected, but plants and animals would still need to be shielded from the Phantoms. _Aki wondered just what was contained under this particular barrier, because it looked so… small. Jane flew over the top of the barrier, lightly tapping a code into the onboard computer. Below, a hatchway began to open, revealing a large hangar, and Jane brought the craft in for a vertical landing.

Jane didn't give Aki the chance to look around before she was being led off towards a set of double doors at the opposite end of the hangar. She glimpsed more light craft like the one she had flown in, as well as ships of designs that she had never seen before. Delicate and elegant, little more than glassed-in metal frameworks with no defenses against the Phantoms. The kind of transports that would have been developed had the entire world not been thrust into a life-or-death situation where everything had been designed for defense. Aki wondered what it would be like to pilot one of those fragile machines. _It must be the closest a human can get to flying without their own set of wings… _

Then they were through the great metal doors, and the view was cut off as they portal slid shut. Jane escorted Aki past a knot of people that didn't even glance up at their passage, stopping before a lift tube. "Almost there," Jane said gruffly. Aki shivered with anticipation, and no little fear. Soon, she'd why her entire world had been turned upside down.

She had the feeling that she wouldn't like the answers…

The lift tube deposited them on an ill-lit floor, with a long, empty corridor that seemed to extend forever. There were cracks and chips in the walls, some sloppily repaired and others left to fall into worse ruin. As Jane began to stride confidently down the hall, accompanied by the echoing click of her heels, Aki held back. _Where did she bring me? _After the haunting beauty of the habitable portion of the city, this decrepit hallway came as a shock. How could they let the part of the city precious enough to be protected fall into such disrepair? And who was down here who could answer Aki's questions? Whoever it was had apparently fallen out of favor…

Aki tried to peer through the windows of the doors they passed; the hall appeared to be lined with offices, half of which showed signs of being empty for quite some time. Jane ignored them, heading straight for the door at the very end of the hall, beneath a broken light fixture. She tried not to think that it was an ominous sign as Jane opened the door without knocking, and beckoned for Aki to follow her in.

The office was further indication of the occupant's disgrace. Dark, because there weren't bulbs in half of the fixtures, with plastic cases of data files stacked haphazardly around the room – the office apparently doubled as a file storage room. There was a stale, dusty odor to the air, with just the faintest whiff of alcohol. There was a massive desk, with a figure bent over in the seat behind it. Jane moved in front of her before Aki could pick out any details, and there was a soft, whispered exchange that Aki couldn't catch. Then Jane moved aside, and the seated figure flipped on the light on his desk.

For several moments, Aki and the man behind the desk studied each other silently. His age was difficult to determine; his body looked as if had wasted away, leaving behind little more than wrinkled skin and bones – there was no metal beneath his shabby clothing. Thin white hair hung limply from his scalp. She would have guessed him to be in his eighties, except that his eyes looked much younger. She searched his face, with its sharp, hollow cheeks and angular features, and wondered why it looked so familiar.

Aki wondered how to begin, but the man began to speak before she could. "Dr. Ross," the man said calmly. "Welcome." His voice hadn't been affected by whatever had wasted his body; it was still deep, faintly sardonic – and utterly familiar. Aki's eyes widened as she was flooded by unpleasant memories, all the result of this man's interference.

"You…" she whispered. The man gave her a thin smile that didn't reach his eyes. There was so much she had wanted to say to General Hein should she ever come face to face with him again, but now that she had, the words had died in her throat. He looked so frail… and now that she was closer to him, she realized he wasn't in a seat, after all, but a wheelchair. Jane tensed, ready to forcefully separate them if need be, but Aki was too stunned to do more than gape, even if it did make her look like a landed fish.

"I see you remember me," he said. "Good; that saves us the time of introducing ourselves. Have a seat," he added, pointing to a worn chair pushed to the side of the room. Jane dragged it over for her, and Aki numbly sat. The chair wobbled beneath her; one of the legs was shorter than the rest. How, she wondered, had Hein, who had always had an immaculate office, come to this? Once seated, she continued to stare at Hein with a dumbfounded expression.

She finally found her tongue. "You're behind this?" she sputtered. "You bastard! What did you do to me? What happened to the others? What the hell happened to me?" Her voice took on a shrill tone, and she tried to calm herself, to no avail.

Jane shifted closer, but Hein looked unruffled by her outburst. "I suppose I did have a hand in this," he said, waving Jane off. "That's part of why I had you revived. I need your help." Aki narrowed her eyes and sat back, but her curiosity was full to the point of bursting, so she was willing to listen. Hein kneaded his forehead as he gathered his thoughts. "I'll start from your accident," he began.

"It wasn't an accident," Aki said sharply. "One of your men _shot _me." That was the one thing she remembered clearly about the Tucson mission.

Hein didn't deny this, merely continued. "From the notes later recovered, Dr. Sid was attempting to implant the spirit directly into your chestplate to save your life." Something about his phrasing bothered her for a moment, then she realized what it was: he'd said 'spirit,' and he'd said it without the scorn he'd openly shown back in the Council chambers. "Unfortunately, something went wrong with the process, and the Phantom particle broke free. Apparently, the only way the doctor could see to save your life was to cryogenically freeze your body before the particle could spread, and cure you by completely eliminating the Phantoms from the planet."

Aki knitted her brows. Cryogenics weren't very advanced, or hadn't been thirty years ago. For him to use such a risky procedure her, the situation must have been desperate indeed. "He worked diligently to complete that 'spirit wave' of his, with the help of Gray Edwards."

Aki jerked upright at the name, and she demanded, "Gray? What happened to him?"

Hein looked irritated to be drawn off the subject, but perhaps realizing he wouldn't get anywhere until Aki knew the truth, he explained, "Captain Edwards and his squad were taken in to custody for treason immediately after Dr. Sid's attempt to save your life. To save his squad, he took all the blame, accepting a court marshal while his squad got off free." His gaze flicked towards Jane, and Aki couldn't resist looking herself, but the woman's face displayed no emotion. "Afterwards, he devoted himself to constructing the spirit wave and saving you."

"What happened to them?" She was afraid to ask, because she knew she wouldn't like the answer. The Phantoms still haunted the earth, and she hadn't been revived until now. Something had gone terribly wrong…

"From what I gather from reading Dr. Sid's notes," Hein continued, they were after the final spirit, which was located within the Phantom crater itself." Aki felt cold; a visit to the Phantom crater would be a death sentence… "They might have pulled it off, except…" Here, Hein faltered. He looked as if he didn't want to continue. "Except that I persuaded the Council that the Phantoms were using human agents to infiltrate the barrier cities, and that you were one of those agents. They authorized use of the Zeus Cannon." Aki felt her blood – or whatever now passed for blood – freeze in her veins. _No… _"I used it at the same time Dr. Sid and Edwards attempted to retrieve the final spirit." His voice was heavy as he whispered, "Dr. Sid was right; the cannon was too powerful. They were killed by the blast… and ever since then, there've been more Phantoms. And the Cannon overloaded and exploded; I barely made it out alive. I _didn't _make it out whole," he nodded at his chair-bound body.

But Aki wasn't pitying his frail frame any longer. "You… you _killed _Sid and Gray!" She stood up, and she would have been shaking with rage had her body been responsive. "You monster!" She spun on her heel, almost tripping and falling. "Why should I do anything for you?" She took a step forward, but was halted by Hein's next words, and the desperate tone with which he spoke them.

"Because you're the last chance this world has," he said. "The earth is dying, Dr. Ross, and I need you to save it."

Aki turned slowly. "What?"

Hein's gaze was beseeching. "You've seen it out there," he said. "Now that we have a way to live among the Phantoms – if you can call that 'life' – no one is taking an interest in destroying them and reclaiming the planet. When the cyborg procedure was first introduced some twenty-five years ago, people the world over submitted to exchanging flesh-and-blood for spiritless machinery." Sensing her curiosity about the subject, he said, "The procedure involves a paring away of the flesh and the spirit within the flesh, until only a bare minimum is left for survival. The remains are then encased in the metal shell, which has a small internal barrier around the living organs within. All that's left of who you were is a collection of organs." Aki felt sick to her stomach, though she was no longer certain she even had a stomach.

Seemingly unaware of her feelings, Hein continued his explanation. "It seemed perfect; not only did it protect, but it offered a form of immortality." He nodded towards Jane, who hadn't seemed to have aged since Aki had seen her thirty years ago. "Not only that, but the bodies need only special processed food, rather than anything grown in farms. We no longer needed quite so many farms or livestock. People began to… forget why we needed to destroy the Phantoms."

Aki remembered how the city's inhabitants had ignored the Phantoms as if they weren't even there. She was still furious at Hein, but the ramifications of what he was saying were sinking in. "But… what about children?" she asked. If her body was as much machine as she'd suspected, then she'd never have children. Neither would any other cyborg.

"There are small areas with barriers, like this one, where people who don't wish to undergo the change can live and reproduce, and there's the Haven space station where people live, as well. But they're few. We're a dying species on a dying planet."

She couldn't think of anything to say to this. She'd thought that finding a way to live without fear of death would be a good thing, even if it was in harmony with Phantoms, but this… She just couldn't find the words.

"I was disgraced by the Zeus's failure," Hein said softly. "I spent several years on the Haven station, agonizing over what I'd done, letting my health decay. Finally, I realized that this was my fault, that if I'd let Dr. Sid create the spirit wave, we might not have this problem. To redeem myself, I began to look in to ways to correct humanity's mistake. I even got a hold of Dr. Sid's notes to try to replicate what he did, but I find that it's beyond me. And then… your body was located, still frozen, but badly frostbitten and past the point of reviving. The Council refused to save you by changing you, remembering what I had said about you being a Phantom agent, so I used all the money I had to locate someone who would perform the procedure without letting the Council know. You were left in the old city so Jane could pick you up without anyone seeing her make contact with this doctor. You woke up a little earlier than you were supposed to, but fortunately, we had a tracking device installed, so Jane was able to tail you. And now… here you are. I brought you back because I want you to reconstruct the spirit wave. I want you to save the world… if it's not already beyond saving."

XXX

Aki stared up at the water-damaged ceiling above her, her mind too restless for sleep. Assuming she could sleep; Jane had said that her body still required rest, but for all Aki knew, it had a different way of getting that rest. She'd left Hein over an hour ago, after his incredible pronouncement. She'd tried to get him to say more, but he'd turned away, becoming absorbed in the holographic screen before him.

Jane had led her out of the row of offices and down a floor to the room where Aki would be staying. They hadn't even for her agreement… Aki would have been annoyed that they'd just blithely assumed she would help; but really, what choice did she have? She'd previously devoted her life to save the planet, and as long as it needed her help, how could she refuse?

The corporal – or whatever she was now; Aki hadn't seen any indication the woman was still in the military – had taken pity on her and dropped her earlier reticence. She'd taken a seat on the sagging cot that was to be Aki's bed and looked up at the woman. "He's not as bad as he used to be," Jane said. "And for what it's worth, he's sorry for what he did." Aki's lips thinned; the apology wouldn't have meant much coming from the former general, and it meant even less coming from his lackey.

Aki didn't want to talk about it. So instead she asked, "Why isn't he like us?" She would have thought that Hein would be first in line for the chance to prolong his life so that he could fight the Phantoms long past what he could do in his current crippled incarnation.

Jane considered the question carefully before answering. "It's his penance," she said quietly. "He doesn't think he deserves to live after what he did. His injury, his disease – he sees them as punishment for what he did. He blames himself for the increased Phantom presence due to the Zeus, and for the deaths of the people who actually might have stopped the Phantoms forever. He's struggling to redeem himself, but he believes that he's beyond saving." There was a tenderness to her voice that Aki wouldn't have expected, and she wondered: did she have feelings for Hein? The woman had been very protective of him in the office… Perhaps that was why she seemed so anxious to make Aki understand.

But she didn't want to think about Hein right now. "What happened to the rest of your squad?" From the way the woman winced, she knew she'd hit a sore spot. She was sorry she'd asked; she hadn't known Neil Fleming or Ryan Whittaker very well, but they'd been quite kind to her.

"Sergeant Ryan Whittaker refused the surgery," Jane said. "The last I heard, he was up on Haven space station with his family." She looked saddened by this, and Aki could imagine her pain. She was still young, while Ryan was aging and would die. "And as for Neil Fleming…" Was that a catch in the other woman's voice? "When the procedure was first begun, there was a sixty-five percent chance of survival. I volunteered to go first, and it went perfectly. But when Neil went under the knife…" she trailed off. "He… he didn't make it," she whispered.

And before Aki could convey her condolences, Jane had fled the room. Now, she was alone, with several more unanswered questions running through her mind. _Save the world… _It was a tall order, but it was possible, assuming she could find eight compatible spirits. She'd need scanning equipment, a lab, a ship… and what if the spirits didn't exist? Hein had said there were fewer farms and livestock. People were exchanging their spirits for these… these mechanical travesties that let them play at life. She _hated _that it had been done to her…

Worse, she now faced a long, empty life ahead of her. No Gray. No possibility of children. All her relatives had been elderly when she'd… when she'd been frozen, and were now likely to be dead. Perhaps she had friends who still lived, friends who'd forfeited real lives to become cyborgs, but would she want to see them now? She didn't know if she wanted to have anything to do with anyone who willingly submitted to the surgery…

Maybe… maybe it would be for the best to let the world die…

To Be Continued…


	3. Ghost in the Machine

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters involved; Square does. No profit is being made from their use. So don't sue; you wouldn't get anything of value, anyway.

Author's Note: I really must get off my rear and write this fic; it's an idea that I really like, and I want to tell the story. Especially this particular chapter, which turned out to be easy to write once I had time to do it; I did half of it in one night. Didn't get much sleep as a result. But this last semester was hell, and I've only just won my way free of it – and now I'm busy with yet another semester. I'll try to write more TSW fics for you all to enjoy.

_**Infinite Requiem**_

_Three – Ghost in the Machine_

In the end, Aki achieved something that passed for sleep, but only for an hour, she knew with an accuracy so uncanny that it had to indicate the presence of some sort of internal chronometer. Still, she awoke feeling refreshed, as if she'd slept the entire night away. Not only that, but she'd awoken to the sensation of something soft under her backside – the numb state her body had been in since she'd awakened into this nightmare world was finally fading, as her body acclimatized to the changes. Aki spent several long minutes just running her fingers over the pillow, marveling that she could finally _feel _it. Oh, she couldn't yet distinguish the texture of the pillow cloth from that of the bedding by touch, but now she knew that it would come with time. She wasn't doomed to an eternity of partial sensory deprivation, at least.

She stood and stretched, out of habit rather than necessity, then gave her room a once over. She'd been too preoccupied to give it more than a cursory glance after her talk with Hein, but now that she'd had time to digest what she'd been told, it was time to investigate her surroundings. The room wasn't much at first glance; the small, dark space had water-stained off-white walls and warped ceiling tiles, and Aki wasn't sure if the dark blotches on the carpet were part of the pattern or stains. The furnishings, while clearly not new, were at least in better shape then the room and the building around her. The military cot that served at her bed looked as if it had been recently pulled from storage, and the small dresser was scratched and dented, but well-cared for. An equally well-used desk and chair were shoved against the wall opposite her bed, and near the desk, a panel that gleamed with newness in the dingy room had been set into the wall, its sockets carefully covered with plastic plugs. It held the promise of new equipment to be installed, so at least they were planning to give her _something _to work with. There was no bathroom that she could find, and she wondered if she even needed one any more.

One thing she knew she did need, however, was clothing. Every time she glanced down at the machine that now passed as her body, a feeling of despair would wash through her, threatening to overwhelm her. This body wasn't _hers_; it was as featureless as a doll's body, with vague curves in all the right places, but lacking in detail. It was a gleaming silvery-gray in color, with each piece joined so smoothly there were no jagged edges. The streamlined form was beautifully crafted, but it wasn't real, and Aki didn't want to look at it. She went over the bureau and pulled open the drawers. Someone had left clothing folded inside, nothing Aki would have chosen for herself, but it would do. She pulled out a black bodysuit similar to the one Jane had been wearing, one that would cling to her body but cover most of the metal portions. Further searching produced a pair of black boots and a long black coat.

Aki wrinkled her nose with distaste. Did Hein dress all his women in feminine versions of his favorite outfit? But there weren't many other options, so Aki dressed herself, feeling marginally better when she could no longer see herself. Maybe now she could at least hold on to the illusion that she was human.

"You're up," a voice said matter-of-factly. Aki turned to face Jane, who had entered unobserved and stood watching Aki dispassionately. "Did you get any sleep?"

"A little," Aki said. Her search had yielded a brush, and she ran the bristles through her mussed hair. At least _that_ was how she remembered it… "I had a lot running through my mind; it's a wonder I was able to sleep at all."

"It is a bit much to take in all at once," Jane agreed, and this time there was sympathy in her voice. "Are you ready to get to work?" Aki remained silent, and Jane frowned. "_Will_ you do it?" she asked at last.

_Finally, someone's actually _asking _me, _Aki thought. "It's not as if I have a choice," she said bitterly. "It seems I've been bought and paid for, so I may as well make sure it's money well spent." Jane actually winced, and Aki eased up on her temper. "Besides, nobody else seems to care about the planet," she said, still finding the oblivious attitude of the cybernetically enhanced to be reprehensible. "Yes, I'll do what I can to save the world – _if _it's possible."

Jane gestured for Aki to follow, and the two women left the shabby room to stride down the equally shabby corridor. It didn't look any better now in the brighter lighting used during the diurnal cycle; ever stain, every groove, every crack was visible. Aki's jaw tightened as she imagined what condition the lab was going to be in. She somehow doubted the term 'state-of-the-art' could be applied to it. Jane led Aki unerringly to the next corridor over and paused before a sliding door that at least looked newer than the frame. "This is where you'll be doing most of your research." She tapped the control panel, and the door slid open soundlessly. Jane stepped back to let Aki through first, then followed after. "There's going to be a computer installed in your room eventually so you'll be able to work from there, but for now, this'll have to do."

Jane hung back by the door as Aki glanced around with great trepidation. Her first reaction was relief; though the paint was peeling from the faded walls and the tiles were chipped, the equipment was in good repair. She recognized a slightly updated version of the machine that analyzed and extracted spirits, a storage device for the acquired spirits, and of course, a computer. The computer itself puzzled her; she immediately recognized the controls that would bring up the holographic control panels, as well as the screen projector, but the cables from the system led to a large matte black container that stood almost as tall as Aki herself. It reminded her of an old-fashioned hard drive tower on a much larger scale, but it lacked any place to insert attachments, unless there were slots behind the only visible access panel.

Seeing where Aki's attention lay, Jane said, with a peculiarly flat tone, "That is one of the most advanced computers available. It'll be able to do pretty much anything you ask of it."

Aki was about to ask how Hein had managed to procure this technological marvel when he couldn't even get a decent building to put it in, but the look on Jane's face stopped her. Something was making Jane extremely uncomfortable, something in the lab itself. Aki ran her eyes over the equipment, wondering what had made the woman so uneasy. Then she shrugged; maybe the woman was just not as much in accord with Hein's plan as she pretended. "Will it do?" Jane asked shortly.

Aki nodded. "It'll do." It wasn't like she had much choice, anyway.

"Good." Jane gave the lab one last, unreadable glance, then gestured towards the door. "Hein wanted to talk to you after I gave you the tour. Let's go."

Aki was rapidly becoming frustrated by everybody's assumptions that she'd do whatever she was told, without having anything explained to her. As she followed Jane, she resolved to press the woman for answers. "Just what is it that you and Hein do, anyway?" she asked. "Are you still military?"

Jane gave a humorless laugh. "The military hates us." For a moment, that seemed to be all she'd get out of the other woman. "No; Hein was discharged from the military after the Zeus Cannon disaster. Publicly because he was wounded, but really, they wanted to get rid of an embarrassment. He spent about a year recovering, and then he was given a seat on the Council as an advisor for military matters – and so they could keep a close watch on him. He's basically held the seat ever since." Jane slowed, sighing. "As the cybernetic process became more widespread and fear of the Phantoms lessened, his role became less and less important over time, and now… he's the only one on the Council who really seems to care any more."

"Why does he still have a seat, then?" Aki asked curiously. The position of a Council member hadn't been a lifelong job thirty years ago.

"The military wants someone on the Council who understands military matters; the Council, however, no longer sees the necessity of the military since we don't fight the Phantoms anymore, and don't want to go to the effort of finding someone new and idealistic to fill Hein's position. So, to keep the military happy, they keep Hein where he is. They're satisfied with the arrangement, since they know Hein. They think he's harmless, maybe a little senile, but not likely to do anything." She smiled grimly. "They have no idea, however, just what he's willing to do to accomplish his goals."

Aki almost felt pity for the former general, who'd pretty much been mothballed and left to rot. No wonder he'd begun to study Sid's theories; he probably didn't have anything better to do.

And he seemed to be the only person left who gave a damn, which made him Aki's only real ally in this world. She wondered if Hell had frozen over while she'd slept. "As for me," Jane continued, "After the captain was court martialed, the rest of the squad was disbanded. I… I couldn't find anyone else that I could work with. So I volunteered for the job as Hein's personal bodyguard." From Jane's tone, Aki knew there was more to the story, but she wasn't willing to talk about it, and Aki didn't really want to listen. The general was responsible for Gray's death; she didn't want to hear any more that might make her feel compassion for the man.

She didn't have time for more questions, however; they'd arrived at the shabby office Aki had been taken to the previous night. Everything looked the same, down to Hein's position behind his desk. Aki wondered if he even left his office any more.

He glanced up at their arrival, and Aki again felt shock at how time had ravaged the man. But it wasn't just age that had changed him; she could read defeat in every line of his body. Reviving her must have been one final, desperate attempt at accomplishing what he'd failed at for years. "Does the lab meet your requirements?" he asked.

"For now," Aki said. "Tell me: how many scanner arrays do I have access to?" Previously, she'd been able to use scanner arrays connected to satellites in various positions over the globe, as well as what the _Black Boa _had been able to carry. It had enabled her to comb an entire planet for the spirits with the proper wavelengths.

Hein couldn't seem to meet her gaze. "None," he said quietly. Aki's jaw dropped.

"None?" she repeated, not sure she heard right. Hoping she hadn't heard right.

"Without the constant need for vigilance against the Phantom threat, scanners were seen as a waste of money. Only those situated around the barriers are active," he said scornfully. "And even those are short range. A few of the military satellites still carry scanning equipment, but it's not currently activated."

"I can't do this if the cities are the only areas I can scan," Aki said flatly.

Hein was silent as he thought it over. "I don't think the military would permit us to use their satellites," he said at length. His voice was bitter, speaking volumes of his relationship with the modern USMF. Clearly, the Council wasn't the only authoritative group Hein was on thin ice with. "The broadcast satellites are out; they lack the scanner array you'd need even if the networks did grant permission for someone to use their satellites." He tapped his fingers on his desk as he thought. "There is one possibility: _Haven _space station. Their equipment could boost the signal considerably and scan at a greater range. Even better, they have a governing system apart from the Council and the military; they'll be more open to the possibility of recreating the spirit wave. They won't side with us, but they won't be against us, either." He frowned. "The problem is going to be making contact with _Haven. _The Council monitors contact between the station and Earth; if I attempted to establish communication through the normal channels, they'd know we're up to something."

Aki chafed at the need to keep their activities secret; Hein's assertions that the Council would be suspicious of her activities didn't make any sense to her. _Thirty years _had passed by; surely the Council didn't still believe that could have had any ties to the Phantoms? But she didn't voice her complaints. "All right," she said. "I'll make do with what I have for now, but until I have access to a spatial scanning array, don't expect any immediate results. I'll start with inside the city itself; that shouldn't be beyond the abilities of what you've given me."

"That's all I ask," Hein said quietly.

XXX

Now that biting her nails was a nervous habit that had been denied her, Aki had taken to pacing. While the scan was running, she had little to do but wait. Wait, and hope. The general scan of the city had yielded no results, so Aki was now combing the city in sections. Narrowing the focus of the scan increased its power; if something as small as an insect contained a compatible spirit, she'd find it.

Aki sighed as she passed by the holo-monitor for the fourth time in as many minutes; despite the advancements in technology, the program was running _slower _than the one she and Dr. Sid had devised. Which left her with nothing to do but walk the length of her lab, turn around and retrace her steps, and then repeat the circuit. She'd poked at the newer technology, familiarizing itself with how it worked, and having discovered that it was very user-friendly and required little effort to adapt to, had resorted to pacing. With every circuit, her attention was drawn to the massive hard drive tower of the main computer. _I shouldn't, _she scolded herself. _Messing with technology I don't understand won't make the scans go faster. _She'd been telling herself that for the past three days, but all the while, she couldn't help but wonder. Could she rig something to make it work better? She was no computer expert, but her position as Dr. Sid's assistant had required her to be handy with hardware and software, and maybe if she just took a look…

Finally, frustrated that the scan was only a quarter of the way done after her hundredth time of passing by the monitor, Aki decided there wouldn't be any harm in at least seeing how the computer worked. She went up to the matte black tower, probing the outline of the panel until she found the latch. She gave a tug, but the panel resisted. Locked.

With a deft twist of her inhumanly strong metal fingers, Aki tore the latch free, and the panel swung open of its own accord. Aki stepped back, her mind struggling to grapple with what was revealed. The computer's inner workings were like nothing she'd ever seen; in fact, what she saw shouldn't have been in a computer at all. Behind the panel was a plastic barrier that at first glance she mistook for being murky green, then she realized it was a window into a fluid-filled tank. Within the dark liquid, she could just see a vague shape, black against the dark emerald fluid. She moved closer, intending to get a better look at what lay within the computer's heart. There'd been nothing like this thirty years ago… A row of buttons set flush in the panel door caught her eye, and Aki pushed the one labeled 'light.' The flood lights that snapped on brilliantly illuminated the tank and what was suspended within, and Aki couldn't suppress a scream as the mysterious lump was thrown into sharp relief.

It was a _person, _or, rather, what was left of one. It was little more than a limbless torso, the face slack and nearly featureless, blind eyes sunken into sockets, the abdomen threaded with wires, swatches of skin peeled away to better insert the circuits. The skin was ragged at the edges; over time, pieces had fallen away to drift around the tank. The skull had been opened and subsequently covered with a plastic dome, and from what little she could see of the brain, it was studded with complex circuitry, connected by insulated conduits running to the roof of the tube. But what made Aki's stomach churn – or would have, if she'd had a stomach – was that the chest was rising and falling. The person was breathing.

It was _alive._

"Horrible, isn't it?"

The familiar voice made Aki whirl around, eyes darting around the room. Seeing nothing, she wondered if her mind had finally had all it could take, if she had snapped again. Because the there was no one in the room with her except for the body…

"I try not to think about it," the voice continued conversationally, and this time Aki knew the voice wasn't in her mind. She voice had come from to her right, near the computer console. She turned towards it, glad to have an excuse to turn her back on the tank's grisly contents. A man was standing next to the chair she'd abandoned, wearing the slightly rumpled civilian clothing of an off-duty USMF soldier. There was a glint of humor in his expression, a look which didn't belong in the same room as the hideously mangled body floating serenely behind her. Aki tried to speak, but failed. The man looked real enough, but upon close inspection, she realized she could see the equipment behind him, as though he weren't really there. As though he were a ghost.

Which was appropriate, really, since she'd been told that Corporal Neil Fleming hadn't survived the conversion surgery. Aki's eyes went wide, and she backed away, into the tank's unyielding surface. The movement sent a shudder through the fluid, causing a peel of flesh to pull free from the ragged torso. The not-quite-there-Neil frowned. "Careful, please," he pleaded. "I'm kinda fragile."

That was when Aki finally realized what her mind had refused at first to accept: that the face of the mangled body was a familiar one. With dawning horror, Aki glanced between the two faces, one pale and ravaged, the other whole yet insubstantial. It was Neil who lived within the computer, Neil, who had helped her in the abandoned city and whose piloting talents had saved them in the Tucson wasteland. "No…" she whispered. This was far worse than the discovery that she had been altered against her will; she, at least, was free to move about, to lead a semblance of normal life. Neil was locked within a computer, free only, she realized now, wherever he had access to a holographic projector, for that was what this 'ghost' had to be.

Neil came up beside her, arms folded across his chest. He studied what was left of his body with an air of detachment that she admired. If it were her body in the tank, she'd be curled into a fetal position and screaming. "Yes," he said softly. He waited patiently while Aki struggled to regain control of herself. Her breathing had quickened, and her entire body was trembling. She feared that she was about to slip into another hysterical fit, like the one she'd had upon first realizing her condition. She squeezed her eyes shut and willed the confused torrent of emotion rushing through her mind to calm. She wasn't exactly successful, but at least she no longer felt like giving in the madness again. She'd staved it off… for the moment.

"You get used to it after awhile," Neil went on when she'd regained as much of her composure as was possible, given the situation. For the first time, Aki noticed that although his good-natured expression didn't waver, his tone had flattened, and there was a flinty look in his eyes that belied his gentle smile. "It's amazing what humans will do to adapt, isn't it?"

"Why?" was all she could manage. Neil turned to look at her, and suddenly all pretense at humor was gone, leaving only the steel she'd previously glimpsed. Despite the seriousness of the situation, she couldn't help but marvel at how holographic projection had advanced since she'd been frozen; Neil's avatar caught every nuance of his body language, adding to the illusion that he was real.

"I didn't have a choice," he said. "My body resisted what the surgeons were doing to it, and I was dying." Neil closed his eyes and turned his face away from her. "It was very painful, I remember that. I couldn't seem to stop the screaming. And yet, my body refused to give up on life so quickly. I lingered for _days, _in agony. I couldn't move, because they'd taken my limbs, and so I was denied the ability to take my own life. And I wasn't the only one suffering; Jane was still recovering from her own surgery when she found out about me, and she spent all her time in my room, when she should have been resting in her own bed while her body learned to cope with its changes. She was an emotional wreck because of the surgery; seeing me like that destroyed her." His voice broke at this, and Aki found she wanted to hold him, to comfort him – but it would do no good; his insubstantial body wouldn't even feel it. "Before we went in for the surgery, we gave each other power attorney in case something went wrong – as a joke, you know? It meant my fate was in Jane's hands, and she couldn't bear to see me like this. I thought she would order the doctors to help me die. Instead, she begged them for any chance to save my life."

He was silent for so long that Aki thought he was done. Then he said, "I know that she did it because she cared about me, and I don't hold that against her. If our positions were reversed, I may have done the same." He finally turned back to her, and despite the sorrow in his words, he seemed strangely calm. "Advances were constantly being made in human/machine interface, and they'd been looking for a test subject for something a bit more drastic than a 'simple' conversion into a cyborg. It turned out that equipment that could keep my alive _did _exist, after all, but it was so big, so expensive, that it was impractical to use it on a simple soldier. But as a test subject, I was suddenly worth so much more. They hooked my body up to these machines and created the link between my brain and the computer, and suddenly they had a human intelligence capable of understanding things previously beyond the mind's ability to grasp. I could be several places at once, access systems with a thought, absorb information in seconds. I think this was meant as the next jump in human evolution." He laughed bitterly. "Unfortunately, I think I scared my benefactors. Or it was the future that frightened them. Whatever it was, they never tried this again, and I was left alone, stored away for nearly a decade, isolated from the world, asleep. Then Hein requested that I be installed here, and since I was deemed as superfluous as he was, the powers that be decided, 'Why not?' So, here I am."

Aki's legs felt weak, and she stumbled over to her chair. "Why didn't anyone tell me about this?"

"They probably didn't want to freak you out, not after all you've already been through. Besides, I've been rather uncommunicative, so they probably didn't think it was worth mentioning." Neil sighed. "When I realized that Jane was here, I decided to play the emotionless machine, partly to out of petty vengeance, so she could see just what she did to me, and partly…" he hesitated. "Partly because I could see that she was in love with Hein, and I didn't want to get between them. If she thought I still existed, somewhere inside this computer, her feelings for me might have destroyed her relationship. Jane has a hard time loving others, and what happened to me would have affected her deeply; it would've taken her _years _to get over it. And I wanted her to be happy, so I never let her know that I'm still here."

"Haven't you been lonely?"

"I can talk to anyone anywhere in the world," Neil said. "I have dozens of online personas, and speak to hundreds of people on the internet. But it's not the same as talking to someone you know personally. Yes, I do get lonely. Which is why I took a chance and decided to talk to you, once you realized the truth." His voice took on a note of desperation. "Please, Dr. Ross, could we speak again?"

Aki resolved then and there to find a way to get a holographic projector for her room. No one should lead a life this lonely. "Of course!" she said. He seemed to sag in relief. "And you can call me 'Aki.'" Neil grinned, and Aki suddenly realized it was the first she'd seen that was actually genuine. His simple joy at finally finding a friend made her smile in return, and it occurred to her that in that moment, she was happier than she'd been in a long time.

He wasn't the only one who'd needed a friend.

XXX

Day and night seemed to blur into one long, monotonous stretch of checking the computers, pacing, eating the questionable 'nutrient packs' that Jane said sustained her body, taking an hour or so off for sleep despite not really requiring it, and resuming her scan-and-pace routine. If it weren't for Neil's steady stream of chatter and Jane's infrequent visits, Aki suspected she would have gone crazy from the boredom.

Not that insanity didn't have its appeal…

The computer gave a beep, and Aki ceased her pacing to trot over to examine the monitor's readout. She growled in frustration as what scrolled across the screen confirmed her worst fears – there were no spirits within the New York barrier city that were compatible with the spirit wave. Aki closed her eyes and banged her head on the bank of monitors in frustration. She'd hoped to find at least one…

"No luck?" Jane's voice startled Aki out of what could have been the start of an attack of hysterics on the scale of the one that had left her incapacitated when she'd first woken in the hospital.

Aki's expression was answer enough for Jane. The other woman sighed. "Hein's doing all he can to get access to another scanner, but he's not having much luck. Getting in touch with _Haven _is proving more difficult than we'd originally thought." Her tone was mild, but beneath it, Aki heard an undercurrent of worry. They'd been trying for almost a week, now. _It shouldn't take this long to establish contact!_

"Let me try it."

Aki stiffened at the unexpected voice; Neil had never even so much as _bleeped _when Jane was in the lab with Aki. She braced herself, waiting for the other woman's reaction. Jane's body had gone rigid, her face frozen in an expression of shock. Aki followed her gaze and saw Neil standing off to the side, arms folded, an amused grin on his semi-translucent features. "'Lo, Jane," he said.

Jane's mouth worked, but no sound came out. Neil turned to Aki, giving her an apologetic look. "She was going to find out about me sometime," he said. "Let me tackle the problem of contacting _Haven," _Neil continued.

"Neil?" Jane finally managed. "Neil… why…?" And then, her nerve broke.

Jane fled from the room.

XXX

Aki rubbed her eyes, which she was certain were red and bloodshot, no matter what Hein had said about the resilience of her new body. "The scanner's range extends about a mile outside of the city, and Neil and I have gone over every last inch of it. We've left no insect, fungus, or bacteria unscanned," she said, wishing she could heave a weary sigh of long-suffering. Her body refused to comply. "There is _nothing _inside the city that can be used to recreate the spirit wave." She was in his office, seated across from him. Jane had taken her accustomed position just behind him, her stance deceptively relaxed.

She saw Hein swallow his disappointment with some difficulty. "I suppose it was too much to hope for that the spirits would be so conveniently close," he said. He folded his liver-spotted hands on the desk before him and leaned forward. "Unfortunately, I haven't been able to establish contact with _Haven _yet, so we can't count on their help. I can lend you my ship; it's a civilian craft, but it could carry the necessary equipment."

Aki grimaced; to scan the planet in small chunks like that could take _years. _She'd already been informed that equipment like that which she'd used aboard the _Black Boa _was currently unavailable; anything she could rig up would be far inferior.

Hein rubbed his temples as if they pained him. "I know it's not the best of options, but it's all we can do right now. We can't wait for _Haven; _we have to do this before things get worse than they already are."

"Too late," Neil's disembodied voice unexpectedly cut in. "Things already are much worse than we initially thought." The three of them turned, just as Neil materialized before them through the projector on Aki's new wrist computer. Hein had grown used to the hologram's presence and only started slightly at the sudden appearance. Jane looked away quickly, her gaze downcast. There was something in Neil's face that Aki hadn't seen before. It took her a moment to recognize it as defeat.

"What do you mean?" Hein asked.

"I was attempting to establish a line of communication with _Haven _station, like you requested," Neil said. "I hacked into the Council database to locate the data I would need, and found… nothing."

"You mean, the Council doesn't communicate with the station at all?" Hein asked in disbelief.

"Not anymore." He let his words hang in the air, giving them a moment to sink in. "I thought at first that maybe I just wasn't looking in the right place, but then I found these." Four rectangles took shape in the air, lined with glowing letters. "They're cargo manifests, for the last three supply runs to the station." He glanced over at Aki, explaining for her benefit, "The Council sends a supply ship to _Haven _every three months. If you read through them, you'll see that they're the same."

Jane frowned. "So? It's only naturally they'd need to constantly re-supply certain items."

"They're the _exact _same," Neil emphasized. "I know; recurring items are to be expected, but look at this." He touched one of the lists, zooming in on one particular item. Aki glimpsed a string of serial numbers and the word 'coil.' "This is a replacement for a part in the station's environmental system. If you look, they list the part again here," he touched the second list, "here," third list, "and here." The serial numbers appeared again on the fourth. "Now, parts wear out over time, but it takes considerably longer than three months. They wouldn't need to replace it four times in one year."

"Maybe they just used the same list over and over, to save the trouble of compiling a new one," Hein said doubtfully. Aki could hear the first glimmerings of fear in his voice.

"Possible," Neil agreed. "But that doesn't explain why I've found no records of the Council communicating with the station at all in the past year. I think someone copied the manifests to cover for the fact that they are no longer receiving requests from the station itself. And the only reason the Council would cease communication with _Haven _station would be because it no longer exists."

To Be Continued…


	4. Once More Unto the Breach

Disclaimer: All TSW characters are property of Square. I don't own 'em, I don't make any profit offa 'em, and suing me would get you nothing.

Author's Note: My massacre of the TSW universe continues. Could things possible get even worse? Well, if there's a way, I'll find it, believe me… Sorry this story is coming so slowly. It's a fic that I personally enjoy, but inspiration comes and goes. Hopefully, over summer, I can make _some _headway. I'm hoping to finish this in ten chapters, if possible. I have this urge to start my next AU fic, _Xenogenesis_, but I don't want to tackle it until I'm at least _almost_ done with this fic. Also, I'd like to announce that I'm going to try to keep my bio here updated so you can check my progress over the summer. I can't promise I'll keep to the tentative schedules I'm posting, but I'll do my best.

_**Infinite Requiem**_

_Four – Once More Unto the Breach_

The craft shuddered one last time as it broke free of the atmosphere, and Aki released a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. Despite Hein's assurance that the ship wouldn't be fired upon without warning, she wouldn't put anything past the residents of this grim new world she found herself in.

Hearing her exhalation, Neil's voice came over the speakers. "I told you I could sneak us pass the sensors," he said, his voice cocky. "Nobody saw us leave." Aki had to hand it to the corporal-cum-computer; he hadn't exaggerated his abilities. If the Council knew how powerful Neil truly was… Aki shook her head. She wasn't going to let them get their hands on her only real friend. "Do you want to take over, or shall I continue flying?" the computer asked, and Aki suppressed a grin. Neil wasn't going to let a little handicap like a ruined body prevent him from doing what he loved.

"Go ahead," she said. "I'm not familiar with the controls of this particular craft, and I need to check the equipment to make sure nothing shook loose during lift-off." She released the straps holding her into the pilot's seat and let zero-g take hold. She didn't drift far; the cramped cockpit was barely large enough for her to sit with arms outspread. Hein had been unable to secure a large ship for her; there was barely enough room for herself and the equipment she'd brought. Jane had stayed back on the planet rather than be crammed into the small ship, despite Hein's reluctance to let Aki go anywhere without protection. Or supervision.

Her newfound solitude wasn't as welcome as she'd have expected; it made her realize just how alone she really was. Jane and Hein had been her last flesh-and-blood connection to her previous life; even though she'd barely known Jane and her relationship with Hein had been volatile, at least they were familiar. Neil's presence was welcome, but he was only a hologram, and because he was worse off than she was, she didn't feel right imposing her problems upon him. Besides, she hadn't known him well before, either.

Worse, the distraction-free environment made the magnitude of her current mission sink in. She was going to attempt to board _Haven _station, one of the last outposts of unaltered humanity – and likely to be little more than an orbiting tomb now, if Neil's suppositions were correct. After much debate, Hein had decided to risk sending a ship to check the station's status, to see if anyone still lived. If not… well, they could still hook up the scanning array to the station's, if it was undamaged. It made Aki ill to use the station like that, but she had to concede that they didn't have much choice. She hadn't wanted to be the one to go, but she'd had EVA training back when she'd qualified to pilot the _Black Boa, _and she was the only one who knew the scanning equipment well enough to set it up. With Neil's help, she could integrate it into _Haven'_s mainframe, and they'd be able to establish a relay between the station and her lab. She fervently prayed that that wouldn't be necessary, that there'd be _someone _aboard the station who was alive, who'd assist them.

But as they drew nearer to the station and no one attempted to make contact with them, Aki's hopes began to wane. She took her seat in the pilot's chair as they made their approach, and Aki held her breath waiting for someone to challenge them. Neil's voice came over the speakers, his tone grim. "I'm transmitting the codes to open the docking bay," he informed her. He hesitated, then added, "I'm not reading any life signs, Doctor. Dammit… Sarge…" This last was so soft, Aki almost didn't hear it. Her synthetic heart went out to Neil; Sergeant Whittaker had been more than his squadmate, he'd been his friend. "You might want to put on your EVA suit. Life support is down."

Aki silently obeyed as Neil maneuvered the ship into the docking bay. Her new body didn't require as much air as her old; in fact, she'd been informed that she could hold her breath up to half an hour, if necessary. But she preferred not to test her body's limits. The EVA suit was a lighter version of the ones available in her own time; with her protected metal body, the suit no longer needed so many environmental controls. It was little more than a light, flexible skin suit, a helmet, and an air tank. Even with the knowledge that the cold of space wouldn't harm her, or that she wouldn't immediately suffocate, it was still unnerving to have so little between her and the vacuum of space.

She waited while the airlock cycled, and when the indicator light turned green, the hatch door irised open. Aki didn't immediately step out; she lightly tapped the suit controls on her wrist to activate the helmet's exterior lighting and magnetize her boots. She drew in a deep, trembling breath, mentally preparing herself for what she would see.

Neil had landed the ship in one of the docking cradles, which had automatically clamped the ship into place upon landing, which meant the station still had power. So the problem with life support had been some sort of mechanical error, not a matter of power loss. Why hadn't they been able to repair it? Aki had seen the cargo manifest; they'd known something was wrong, and had requested the part needed to save their lives. Had it come too late? Had the Council just not sent it at all? Another thought struck her. What if the Council had _wanted _them dead? Then, the fragile full-humans would no longer be a drain on their resources, and there'd be no more moral opposition to the cyborg procedure. Aki shivered; given Hein's reluctance to reveal her existence to the Council, and his own aversion to talking about the world's mysterious leaders, it was easy to harbor thoughts of conspiracy.

The station's empty, echoing corridor was getting to her, Aki realized. She summoned Neil's hologram from the computer around her wrist for company, and the young tech materialized beside her. His brooding expression was small comfort, however, and with his silent steps and vaguely translucent body, he seemed more like one of the ghosts Aki could almost believe haunted the station, rather than a companion.

"The control room is this way, three levels down," Neil said.

The elevator was simple enough to locate, and, fortunately, it was functional. It only took a moment to descend three floors. The metal doors slid open, and Aki stepped out… and couldn't stop herself from screaming at the sight that greeted them.

There were bodies in the corridor. Technicians, a detached part of her thought; the panels had been torn from the walls, exposing the conduits beneath. Tools were scattered around their still forms. Beyond them, a steel bulkhead had dropped, presumably sectioning off a breach – and blocked the control room. Neil studied it silently, then turned away. "There should be a computer around here I can link with. Once I've entered _Haven'_s system, I can access the control room and raise the bulkhead."

Aki obediently searched behind the doors lining the corridor until she found a computer interface. She tried to ignore the body slumped against the wall, but she couldn't help but think it was staring accusingly at her as she hooked her wrist computer into the other computer's port. Neil's hologram flickered, and then he said, "I'm in."

Aki could hear the bulkhead opening, the sound of metal scraping echoing and amplifying as it traveled down the empty corridor. With the station depleted of air, there was no tug on her as the hull breach was exposed. "C'mon," Neil nodded in the general direction of the control room. "It'll be easier to do what we came for from there."

The control room was worse than the corridor; there were more bodies, and these had been caught in the rapidly decompressing air. Aki tried not to look as she headed towards the main computer bank. Neil, still tied in to the mainframe, immediately got to work.

"There are no life signs," Neil said in a subdued tone, confirming what he'd scanned from the ship. "From what I can tell, they were attempting to rig up something until the part they requested arrived, but something went wrong. There was an explosion, which resulted in a hull breach, and this area decompressed. The remaining mechanics couldn't gain access to the control room before life support failed."

"How many?" Aki asked hollowly.

Neil was silent while he found the information. "There were nine hundred and thirty two people aboard the station. About two hundred of them were children. The sarge had five children and thirteen grandchildren," Neil said in a whisper. "They're all dead."

_Nine hundred… _It was a much smaller population than Aki would have thought, but it was still a crushing blow to humanity, especially considering how few of them were left that were purely human.

Even Neil was grimly silent as they programmed the station's computers to integrate their scanning array. By the time they were almost finished, Aki's hands were trembling so hard she was having trouble inputting commands. Neil's holographic interface seemed incapable of displaying physical signs of the horror they had seen, but she could see from the straight line of his mouth and the sadness of his eyes that he wasn't unaffected by the deaths of so many unaltered humans. When he finally spoke, his voice held an edge to it, as though he were choking back overwhelming emotions. "We should destroy the station," he said. "It's not right to leave them floating here forever."

Aki agreed. "But we can't, not yet," she said. "Not until the scanners show us what we need."

Neil nodded. "I know; I meant afterward, if we save the world."

_If, not when… _Aki forgave him his pessimism; it was hard to believe they would succeed, when they were surrounded by what was left of what had been Earth's last, best hope for the future. Aki found she couldn't reply; a lump had formed in her throat, and she found herself wondering if she could cry. Things had never seemed so impossible as they did now, and Aki slumped forward on the console, choking cries escaping her throat. And then, as Neil watched helplessly, Aki began to slam her head into the console and scream, and found that she couldn't stop.

XXX

"And this has happened to you before?" Hein was leaning forward in his chair, gazing at Aki intently, warily, as if he expected her to lose it again, right there in his office. Not that she blamed him. After all, she was terrified of what had happened to her aboard the _Haven _station, too.

"Yes." Aki was surprised by how calm, how level, her voice sounded. During the flight back from the station, she hadn't been able to coherently string two words together. "When I woke up in the hospital, alone, I just… I lost it. I don't remember what I did, only that I had no control, and I came out of it feeling physically and emotionally drained." Much like she felt now; she hadn't suspected her metal body could feel such exhaustion.

Hein was silent, thoughtful. "The first instance could be dismissed as a side effect of the medical procedure. But you've had weeks now to adjust to your new body. You've regained all feeling, right?"

Aki nodded. The body now felt as natural to her as her own had been, beyond the fact that sensations weren't as acute as they had been before. "And I know you weren't prone to mental breakdowns before this," Hein continued. Aki supposed she should be flattered; it was the closest to a compliment Hein had ever given her." His thin shoulders slumped. "Dammit. It sounds like a reaction to the procedure. There are rare instances where the mind doesn't take to the cybernetic body as well as it should, and it sounds like you may be one of those cases."

"What happens to others like me?" Aki asked, her voice small.

"It's been awhile since a case cropped up," Hein said, tilting his head sideways as he struggled to remember. "Some of them, I think, continue to function normally, with occasional 'episodes,' similar to what you suffered – though I can't remember a case as severe as yours."

"And the rest of them?" Aki dreaded the answer.

Hein's cool blue eyes met hers, and she could see he wasn't going to spare her the gory details. "They go insane," he said flatly. "I don't think any of them are alive today." Whether it was because of their madness, or something else that resulted in their death, Hein didn't say, and Aki didn't want to know.

"If you don't know anything else, then I'm going to get to work," Aki said, standing. "We should be receiving data from the scanning array by now." She fled Hein's dingy office, feeling Hein's gaze follow her out. Her attack of hysterics had frightened her; she'd tried to laugh it off as stress, but she knew that wasn't true. Hein was right; she _hadn't _been prone to breakdowns before, no matter how bad the situation. This was a new problem entirely. Twice now, she'd lost control of body and mind. The first time, she'd been lucky. That hadn't been the case this time. When she'd picked herself up from the floor, Neil's frantic cries only dimly encroaching upon her awareness, she'd seen blood smeared on the metal plating, and in the dented computer console. She'd touched her forehead to find swollen tissue and blood – and an unidentifiable mechanical lubricant that was part of her cybernetic components. Neil had tried to speak to her, to bring her back to herself, but Aki was barely aware of his presence. She had staggered to her feet and stumbled back to the ship, using the wall to brace herself. Neil had shut down his hologram, aware that he may as well not have been there for all the attention she was paying him. Once in the ship, Neil had somehow managed to get her to stir from her stupor long enough to perform the EVA space walk to attach their equipment to the station's – an action she didn't even recall performing – and then had flown them back to their headquarters without any direction, or any comment, from Aki. Even though he hadn't manifested or even spoken to her beyond reminding her of their mission, she could almost feel his eyes upon her, watching, waiting…

And now she was getting paranoid. She wondered if that were a symptom, too. Aki pushed the thoughts to the side, aware they could be a dangerous distraction. _Just concentrate on your assigned task. Just worry about finding more spirits to reconstruct the spirit wave. It may just be nothing, a minor side effect like Hein said. Don't think about how you may no longer have the time to do it. _Aki hastened her stride, aware now that the clock was ticking.

Suddenly, the term 'deadline' had taken on an ominous new meaning.

XXX

"Nothing!" Aki barely restrained herself from smashing her fist on the console before her. She leaned back in her chair and kneaded her forehead. The scanning data from _Haven _had been slow to come as the earth rotated beneath the station's arrays, and there were still blind spots in the data. What did come through was discouraging: nothing that even remotely matched the necessary spirits was revealed. What _did _come up was distressing: there were far fewer cities than there had been, and there were fewer, smaller spirits clustered in what few cities did exist. Aki hadn't asked how many cities were left, being too afraid to hear the answer. Seeing her fears confirmed deepened her apathy. _There are so few people left… And of those people, how many of them are still human? Even if I can recreate the spirit wave, there may be no way to save the human race._

Movement at the edge of her vision jerked her out of her downward spiral, and she turned to where Neil had manifested beside her. "You need to wear a bell or something," she growled. "You could've given me a heart attack… that is, if I still had a heart."

Neil just gave her a grin. "I thought of something that might help us. I was just going through the records on your previous work. Did you know that Captain Edwards tried to help Dr. Sid complete the spirit wave?"

Aki nodded. Hein had mentioned something to that effect. "But they weren't successful."

"Because their attempts to retrieve the final spirit were interrupted when the Zeus fired on the crater," Neil said. "The _Black Boa _went down, and they were never heard from again. They were presumed dead." He relayed the information tonelessly, like the soulless computer some thought him to be. Aki felt a surge of renewed anger at Hein, who had brought this tragedy about.

Neil continued on. "Your chestplate – it contained the first seven spirits, didn't it? And they took it with them; that's why Dr. Sid had to cryogenically freeze you, because you no longer had the chestplate to form the barrier around the Phantom particles."

"What are you getting at, Neil?" Aki asked.

"I'm saying that no one ever went back to the crater to salvage the ship or the… the bodies. At the time, there was too much Phantom activity and no human could survive down there. And when the cybernetic procedure was developed, there was never a reason to go back down there. The ship is still down there, Doc – and so is the chestplate. It could still contain those seven spirits."

"Neil, why didn't you suggest this before?" Aki demanded. They could have saved so much wasted time…

"Because that ship is the captain's tomb," Neil said quietly. "I didn't want to desecrate it unless it was absolutely necessary."

He was right, Aki realized. _And I don't know how I'd handle it… but we need those spirits. _"I hate to do it," Aki said, "but, if we can save the world, it can be Gray's legacy." Aki stood and hit the intercom, summoning Jane. The other woman came after a few moments, and she watched Aki with confusion as the scientist prepared to live. "What's going on here?" she asked.

"Get ready. We're leaving in ten minutes," Aki said in voice that was, for the first time since she'd woken, filled with hope.

"Where are we going?"

"'Once more unto the breach,'" Aki quoted softly. Once again, humans would venture into the most inhospitable place on the planet.

"What does that mean?" Jane demanded.

"It means we may find what we need in the Phantom crater," Aki said.

XXX

The crater yawned open before them, its edges lined with jagged teeth of outthrust rock. A strong wind tore through the outcroppings, producing a sound not unlike a moaning. Aki crept as close to the edge as she dared, not quite trusting the rock not to crumble under her weight. Jane hung further back; from the expression on her face, she didn't think Aki was being cautious enough. "It looks much deeper than the reports indicate," she noted in a detached tone. "The structural damage inflicted by the Zeus must be spreading." She scowled. "I wish I could get near enough to the edge to get a better look; I can't see the _Black Boa _from here." She hoped the rock hadn't broken beneath the ship; if it had fallen into some deep crevice, their chances of getting inside the ship decreased.

"Let me," Neil said, the hologram swirling into existence before the two women. Before either could respond, he stepped to the edge, and then off. Aki bit back the instinctive response to cry out to him in warning as the hologram proceeded to traverse the thin air until he was several feet away from where the others stood, at the limit of the projector's range. Aki had to admit, it was damned convenient to have a hologram on their side.

"See anything?" Jane asked. She had turned her back on the sight of Neil suspended over nothingness; Aki began to wonder if was a fear of heights that kept Jane from coming any nearer.

"A lot of things," Neil said cheerfully. "What a spectacular view!" He dropped down on his stomach and spread his arms. "Look! I'm flying!"

Jane turned around long enough to give him a withering glare, and even Aki was irritated by the hologram's antics enough to roll her eyes. "The _ship, _Neil. Do you see the ship?"

"It's difficult to discern details from this height, but there does look like there's something metallic down there. Wait, let me access the satellite…" His eyes seemed to glaze over for a moment. "Yes, there's _definitely _a metallic mass down there that isn't an ore deposit. It looks like there's a clearing big enough for the ship about a mile away; it's the closest we can get," he said apologetically.

The flight down was quiet; none of them were willing to contemplate what was down there – or what would happen if the object of their hunt _wasn't _down there. The ship touched down, stirring the dead air. Stepping out took all of Aki's courage; this was the source of their planet's woes, the origin of the Phantoms. And the proof of this was all around them.

They weren't alone within the crater; everywhere Aki looked, her modified eyes saw Phantoms. Every variety catalogued, and even a few species Aki had never seen before, were gathered in a seething mass, with little space between them. In some instances, the Phantoms were actually overlapping each other. Despite knowing she was immune to the aliens, Aki shivered, and even Jane looked unnerved. "Let's hurry up and get this over with," Jane said. Aki agreed.

They plunged into the amassed Phantoms, closing their ears to the endless hoots and wails that their passage caused. Tentacles slid through Aki's body, and she shuddered as she felt them come up against the internal barrier that protected what was left of her spirit. They picked their way across the crater, hoping that the ground beneath them wouldn't give way.

The _Black Boa _lay at the edge of a massive fissure, its hull a shattered wreck. It hadn't been a controlled crash; the ship had come straight down, fast, as if it had lost all power and just plummeted from the sky.

Aki found herself shying away from the ship, choosing instead to creep to the edge of the fissure and peering down. She barely had the chance to process what she'd glimpsed – a churning mass of blue shot through with pulsing veins of red – when Jane called to her, her voice urgent. Aki picked her way through the rubble to the woman's side.

"Footprints," Jane said, pointing.

Aki looked in the direction indicated. Jane was right; there were three sets of footprints leading to and from the _Black Boa'_s hatch. There was no wind this deep within the crevice, so there was no way to tell how old the footprints could be. "Could they be Gray and Sid's?" she asked hopefully. "A rescue?" Could Gray still be alive after all these years?

"I don't know," Jane said. She stepped carefully so as not to disturb them more than necessary, arriving at the ship's open hatch. She inspected the hatch, running her fingers along scored metal, where it had been pried open from the outside. She peered inside, then turned back to Aki. "Someone cleared the debris away from the hatch," she said. Aki went to Jane's side, taking the same care. Upon reaching the open hatch, Aki shuddered. She didn't know if she wanted to go inside; she was afraid of what she'd find.

Aki entered the bay where the ship's Quattro had been stored, climbing over the upthrust rib-like supports that had been forced upward during the impact. The Quattro was lying on its side, its barrier-projecting cockpit pierced by one of the metal struts. Jane clicked on her flashlight and swept it over the rubble-strewn interior. The tracks here were less well-defined, but there was still evidence that someone had passed through.

From there, they made their way to the cockpit, exploring every room they could gain access to on the way. Neil, who had vanished during their journey through the Phantom herd, put in an appearance. "I've used the _Haven _satellite to scan the area; it's not picking up any sign of the spirits in the chestplate." Aki stared at him with some surprise; the Phantom crater had been in the array's blind spot. Neil immediately picked up on her puzzlement. "I've been using the last few hours to reposition the satellite. Not an easy task, and I'm worried it may have caught the Council's attention." Which explained why he hadn't tried it before.

"It was shielded with a barrier," Aki said, refusing to believe that the object of their hunt, what could well prove to be their last chance, wasn't there. "Maybe the scanner can't pick the spirits up through it. Or the readings could be distorted because of the Phantom presences." _Or maybe it's broken. Or the Phantoms have changed, and are immune to the wave and stole the spirits from the plate. No… don't think like that. _

Jane, who had gone ahead of them, suddenly reappeared. "I don't think you should see this," she said.

"What?" Aki asked.

"I was just in the cockpit – it's not pretty."

Aki shoved her way past the other woman and entered the cockpit, which she noticed had also been pried open. Aki's gaze darted around, looking for whatever Jane had been warning her against. At first, she saw nothing… and then she saw it, a bundle of what at first Aki mistook as dried twigs in the pilot seat but which she realized was a decayed corpse. The world around her seemed to fade as she stepped forward.

It was Dr. Sid; she only knew that from the smock he still wore. His body was still strapped into the pilot's chair, and she could see where the straps had shattered his ribs. Slivers of glass were lodged in the decaying flesh and in the bone itself from when the viewport had broken. He hadn't felt it – or so she hoped – because she could see where the force of the landing had snapped his neck. They'd hit with enough force that he'd been killed instantly.

Aki hadn't thought it could get worse until she turned away and saw the copilot's seat. Shards of glass stuck out from the cushion, and others were scattered around the floor, their ends darkly stained. The seat was also stained black with what Aki knew was blood – a lot of blood. More than a human could lose and still be alive. Someone else had sat here, died here… and whoever it was, the body had been taken by whoever had come years earlier. The body certainly hadn't moved itself; there would have been a blood trail as whoever it was had moved away.

"Neil," Aki said tightly. "Was anyone else working with Sid and Gray? One of Sid's assistants, perhaps?"

Neil cocked his head, a quirk she recognized to mean he was skimming the available information. "No; it looks like Dr. Sid dismissed all of his assistants and set off alone with the captain after the general discredited him."

"So Gray…" Aki couldn't complete the sentence.

"Why would someone take the captain's body?" Jane demanded, as if Aki could produce the answers. "Haven't they done enough to him already?" Aki held her tongue, knowing it wouldn't be wise to mention that it was _Hein _who had sent Gray to his grave in the first place. Besides, Jane did have a point. For what reason would anyone want Gray's body? Obviously not for burial purposes; Neil would have found some record of it, if that were the case, and why take Gray and leave Dr. Sid?

"Maybe… maybe he survived?" Aki ventured, though she didn't hold out much hope. The force of impact had caused the _Black Boa'_s frame to fold like an accordion; Gray's body would have been shattered, much as Dr. Sid's had been. And there was so much blood…

Aki closed her eyes and turned her back on the devastation. _Remember why you're here, _she told herself sternly. _Don't let their deaths be in vain._

"Find the chestplate," Aki said, keeping her voice neutral. She tried to keep herself detached from the wreckage around her; she didn't want to spark another episode.

They searched the ship from one end to the other, and when that yielded nothing, they explored the ground around the ship, examining every bit of debris, looking for the chestplate – or any pieces of it that might remain.

"Could it have been thrown clear further from here?" Jane asked.

"I don't know," Aki said, frustrated. "I don't think they would have time to throw it from the ship, and I don't see how it could have been thrown free. Sid or Gray would have either been carrying the chestplate, or it would have been in the lab. It's not in any of the rubble from the cockpit, and the lab didn't have any hull breaches the plate could have been pulled through."

"You think that whoever took Gray took the chestplate," Jane stated. "But I don't understand. Why would someone steal the spirit wave?"

To be continued…


End file.
